Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Australia's first voiceprint recognition telephone banking

NAB tests voiceprint recognitionNAB is the first local institution to give customers an opportunity to enrol in a voiceprint recognition system, dispensing with the need to remember PINs and passwords or provide personal information when calling the bank. Customers enrolled in National Australia Bank's new voice biometrics system for phone banking may be able to use the same system to authenticate their internet banking activities.

NAB direct channels speech program manager Sam Jackel said voiceprints could be used as a second-factor authentication method for internet banking transactions independently verified at present via an SMS message sent to the customer's mobile phone. Users had to open the message to retrieve a single-use passcode and enter it into the onscreen session, he said.

Staff tested the voice registration and identity verification system for several weeks and it was being offered initially to customers who had difficulties with the automated check and required personal attention.

After callers have registered their unique voiceprint, they simply recite their individual account number at the beginning of each call and the system will verify their identity before the call centre agent picks up the call. Customer identification and verification used to take two to three minutes a call, but now this has been cut to about 20-30 seconds.

NAB is using Salmat VeCommerce's VeSecure voice biometric technology, which sits on top of VeConnect, a speech recognition system installed earlier this year to allow automatic routing of phone calls to the right service area and to support the launch of a single number, 136 NAB, to manage all NAB customer inquiries.